Compare yourself with rivals on Standing
Standing compares you with the brands you track. Its five tabs show where you stand against rivals, how that has moved over time, which engines and themes drive it, and which questions started or stopped naming you.
What are the five tabs of Standing? #
Standing has five tabs under a shared heading.
- Against rivals (the default): every tracked brand on the five measures.
- Over time: one measure, week by week, against a comparison.
- By engine: your figures on each engine.
- By theme: your Mention rate in each theme of questions.
- Gained and lost: the questions that started or stopped naming you, with a count beside the tab name.
The five measures are Mention rate, Share of voice, Average rank, Your pages cited and Sentiment, and What the five measures mean defines each.
What is at the top of every Standing tab? #
Every tab opens with the edition line, then a figure and a headline side by side. They are the same on every tab.
The figure is Your place on mention rate, for example 2nd of 26: your place among the brands that have a Mention rate this week. The headline is worded from the leader's side, such as "Novaly leads you by 3.7 points." A second sentence compares you with the next brand below you: level with it, or ahead of it by so many points.
When a gap is small enough for chance to explain, the headline says so. Under it, a line says whether your place held and whether any of the top five moved beyond chance. If you lead, it reads You lead on mention rate.
What does the Against rivals tab show? #
Against rivals is a table of every tracked brand with five columns after the brand name: Mention rate, Share of voice, Average rank, Your pages cited and Sentiment. Your own row is tagged You.
It is sorted by Mention rate to start, and a column heading sorts by that column. A brand with no figure shows Not measured and is never ranked last.
Under the table, a note says the figures cover the same questions as This week. Where you are strong and weak, by engine then gives one card per engine with its Mention rate, marking the highest highest and the lowest lowest. A last block, Gained and lost this week, links to the tab of that name.
What does the Over time tab show? #
Over time draws one measure across your recent readings. Choose the measure with the chips, which list the five in order, and the span with Weeks shown: Last 6 readings, Last 12 or All.
A solid line is you. A dashed line is the comparison, chosen under Compare with:
- Top rival: the best-placed other brand on that measure, which can change from week to week.
- A named rival: the two best-placed rivals are offered by name.
- One engine: you on that engine alone. A second row, Which engine, picks it.
- One theme: you in that theme's questions alone. Which theme picks it.
Show as a table swaps the chart for the same numbers, and Show as a chart swaps back. Before there are two weeks of readings to draw, the tab says Not enough readings yet.
What is the band on the Over time chart? #
The band is the likely range for each week of Mention rate, drawn around your line. It is drawn only for Mention rate, because that is the one measure with a likely range, and the note under the chart says so.
The note also says two readings differ for real when their bands do not overlap. That is a strict test: bands that stay apart certainly differ. This week and the other Standing tabs judge a move with the full method on Setup, How we measure, which can call a move real when bands overlap a little. A final line, The newest reading is final., appears only when the newest week is complete. Why a number is blank or shows a range explains likely ranges.
What does the By engine tab show? #
By engine is a table with one row per engine that has answered, with the columns Mention rate, Share of voice, Average rank, Your pages cited, Sentiment and Answers. It is sorted by Mention rate, and the highest engine is marked strongest and the lowest weakest.
The last row, All six, blended, is your figure across every engine (the number follows how many engines answered). It is the same figure This week shows, so the two screens cannot disagree.
A note under the table names any engine that has not answered yet, with a link to Setup, Engines. If no engine has answered, it says No engine has answered yet. Which AI engines BotSay asks says what each engine is.
What does Why an engine is low show? #
When one engine names you less than the rest, By engine adds a card named for it, such as Why Perplexity is low.
The card gives a count: "Perplexity named a rival and not you on 14 of 40 questions".
The card carries the line Read what it says when it answers from them. and a Read button, which opens Evidence filtered to that engine. The card is a count, never a cause. It tells you where to look, not why the engine prefers a rival. It appears only when at least two engines have answered and one is clearly lowest, and a tie draws no card.
What does the By theme tab show? #
By theme shows how your Mention rate moved in each theme of questions. Each row has the columns Theme, Questions, Mention rate, the previous week's rate under its own heading such as Week of 7 Sep 2026, Change and Who leads.
A change reads up 3.7 points or down 1.0 point only when it is beyond what chance would produce, allowing for the number of themes compared. A smaller move reads as sitting inside the range chance explains, and an exact tie reads no change.
Rows are sorted with the moved themes first. Who leads says You or the rival's name. A theme in your work carries the tag in your work and links to its topic page, and any other theme opens Over time for that theme.
Why does a By theme row show a note instead of a change? #
A row shows a note when its two weeks cannot be compared. The notes are too few, New this week., Not asked this week. and a line saying the theme's questions changed between the two weeks.
Each note is a fact about the evidence and says nothing is wrong with the theme's figure. A line under the table repeats the rule: same questions in both weeks. Why a number is blank or shows a range explains each note.
What does the Gained and lost tab show? #
Gained and lost lists the questions where an engine's answer changed between the last two readings. A gain is a question that did not name you and now does, and a loss names you no longer.
A strip on top shows Started naming you and Stopped naming you, each counting question and engine pairs, and Net. Net carries a colour only when the difference is bigger than chance explains.
The chips Lost and Gained filter the list, and the selects Engine and Theme narrow it. Losses come first. Each row gives the question, the engine, the theme and the dates, for example "Named you on 7 Sep 2026, not on 14 Sep 2026.", with an Open link to the question.
Why does Gained and lost say one answer flipping is often chance? #
An engine's answer to a question varies from reading to reading, so a single gain or loss does not mean much. The note under the list reads: One answer flipping is often chance. Look for the same question lost on several engines.
A loss that repeats across engines, or a Net that clears the colour test, is the signal. Until an engine has two readings, nothing can flip on it, and the tab says it needs two readings on the same engine. If nothing flipped between the last two readings, the tab says so and notes that this is a result, not a gap.
Tessera, Novaly, Pinefield, Kestrel Pay and Orbita are invented brands, used here as examples.